NCPA Events Video Clips

Charles Murray

TOPIC: Dr. Murray will discuss his new book, "In Our Hands: A Plan to Replace the Welfare State"

There will be a Question and Answer period at the end of Dr. Murray 's remarks. Copies of Dr. Murray's book will be available for purchase, and he will be available after the program to sign copies of his book.

Charles Murray is an influential conservative American policy writer and researcher. He is most widely known for Losing Ground, his influential work on welfare reform, Human Accomplishment, a quantification and ranking of well-known scientists and artists and as co-author (with Richard J. Herrnstein) of The Bell Curve in 1994, exploring the role of intelligence in American life. He's written several other books on modern social issues and politics, and has sometimes written on libertarian perspectives.

Murray has been named a number of times on lists of influential Americans in national policy-making. He obtained an A.B. in history from Harvard in 1965 and a Ph.D. in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1974 and has been a fellow of the influential American Enterprise Institute since 1990. He has been a frequent contributor to The Public Interest, a journal of conservative politics and culture.

In addition to his books and articles in technical journals, Murray has published extensively in The New Republic, Commentary, The Public Interest, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, National Review, and the Washington Post. He has been a frequent witness before congressional and senate committees and a consultant to senior government officials of the United States, the United Kingdom, Eastern Europe, and the OECD. Murray was named by the National Journal as one of the 50 "People Who Make a Difference" in national policy-making. When U.S. News and World Report published its cover story on "The New American Establishment," Murray was chosen as one of thirty-two men and women who define the contemporary intellectual debate on social policy. A recent Newsweek cover article picked Murray as one of a hundred Americans who lead their fields.

Murray has received grants from the right-wing Bradley Foundation to support his scholarship, including the writing of The Bell Curve. As a result of that book's controversial claims, Murray reportedly received bomb threats, as have a number of other race and intelligence researchers.